Look Away
by miss selah
Summary: Ghost!Kikyou You can’t be the voyeur of your own reflection. [indicated kikyou kagome] [for Daire]


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**Look Away**

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The glint of something silver, shining, slides easily through her hair as Kagome brushes back long dark tresses, looking deep in to the mirror. Seeing it, seeing past it. She saw herself, only she could hardly remember her own facial features anymore. It had been so long since she had taken the time out of her busy life to do something as silly as watch herself brush her hair.

It wasn't even that she had taken the time out to do so now. After the death of Kikyo, the third one, as the case would be, Inuyasha had banished her from his sights. He couldn't stand to look at her, not when she so resembled his dead lover, not when he failed not once, not twice, but over and over from protecting her. He was unsure of himself, and Kagome was more than willing to give him the space that he needed to get through this.

He would come around, eventually, if only because she was the only one alive now that could sense the prescence of a shikon shard. He _needed _her, even if all he really needed was for her to go away. She knew it, realized the slight power that she had over him, and was not above using it to her advantage. All's fair in love and war, right?

Wasn't it both?

She felt almost like a voyeur as the silver brush slide through her hair, and she felt almost as though she was doing something highly more sexual than she actually was. . . as though she was undressing herself, panting and gasping and gripping, trying to catch and hold something that was so far beyond her she wasn't even sure what it was anymore.

The glint of something silver, shining, twinkled merrily in her eyes and Kagome blinked, startled. _What was that? _

Kagome dropped her hairbrush without much thought, ignoring the way the way that it cluttered up her room with unneccessary noise. Her attention was on the mirror, her hands a hairs breadth away from them _look away, look away, _as she studied the silver surface. There was something there, something laying just underneath… something that most certainly didn't belong.

A movement in the mirror made her jump and she whipped around to face whomever had entered her room… but there was no one.

She ran a shaking hand through her hair the same way that she had ran the hairbrush through it, and sighed. "You're going to drive yourself crazy, Kagome." She whispered under her breath, but looked back anyways.

That was her, wasn't it?

That was her shaking smile, even though she wasn't positive that she was smiling, that was her steady hand, even though she was sure she was shaking. Those were her silver eyes, tilted sharply, staring hard, as if the person in the mirror was a second person, the voyeur that she had just thought herself, and was confused as to why she had stopped.

Kagome glanced around the room again, uneasy, and tried to ignore the way that her breath was coming out in scared, timid pants. She hadn't been timid in years, why now, now that she was alone in her room with no one but her own reflection? Had she spent so much time away from the present that she forgot what it was to let her guard down? Was it that she had subconciously picked up a sound, a threat, that she couldn't properly identify and didn't have anyone around to quell her fears?

She looked back at the mirror and could have almost sworn that the girl in the shining, silver surface was someone else.

"Who are you?" She asked it, and placed both hands flat on the desk in front of it, glaring up at her own scowling face, her nose practically skimming the surface. Almost, but not quite yet.

If she felt the temperature in the room drop several degrees, she accounted it to an overactive imagination.

An identifiable voice, perhaps self preservation, reared its ugly head and screamed. _Look away, just look away…_

She simply couldn't look away.

Why hadn't she ever noticed all those dark lines? When had her eyes become so harsh? She really did look like Kikyo, especially in this light, especially at that angle, especially in those clothes. . .

There was something there now, something in the mirror that reflected her world that was sharper, more in focus, than anything else around her. Something she hadn't felt before, because she certainly couldn't be seeing it. It beckoned for her to reach forward, no one will notice, _just touch me, take me, please me, _and like the contrary little girl that she was, she faultered, confused, feeling like she was trapped in a bad high.

Had Alice felt this way, practically compelled, to follow the rabbit? Hadn't she fallen down a well and been subjected to horror after horror before she finally accepted it as the norm?

Hadn't she been expelled, and found a way back. . . a way back through the mirror?

Kagome shook her head and reminded herself that it was best not to think in metaphors. Still…

It was wonderland over there, wonderland of green grass and cloudless skies, especially by comparison to the grey and grey and grey world she lived in now. It wouldn't be any easier over there; she certainly didn't want to disillusion herself in to believing _that, _but it would be something closer to home, in the arms of that mirror girl, cradled to her breast and rocking against her as she fell asleep.

Was it possible that she would be happy over there? Was that where the other half of her aching soul had gone?

She reached forward, prepared to slip right through, and her fingers collided with cold, hard glass, smudging the surface and pulling her out of her trance.

She looked away then, and grabbed her backpack for school, determined to put the mirror out of her mind. She had been so sure that if she waited just a second. . . just one more second. . . she might have been able to slip through.

In the mirror, her image reminded, frozen with that same cold, curious frown, and the image raised it's hand, pressing it against the glass before it faded away.

Almost.

Never close enough.

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Miss Selah: Indicated Kikyo / Kagome. Spiritual interactions. Sorry this sucks, Daire.


End file.
